Ahead of Bitcoin Cash Fork, Mining Power Still Favors SV

Bitcoin cash is expected to execute its scheduled hard fork in the next few hours, but warring mining-pool factions continue to duke it out over control of the network.

According to Coin Dance, mining pools supporting Bitcoin SV lost some of their relative hash power over the past 24 hours, though they still maintain a majority with roughly 72.22 percent of the current network’s power. In contrast, mining pools which likely support Bitcoin ABC mined 16.66 percent of the current network.

While the latter group of mining pools have increased their relative hash power from 11.11 percent roughly 24 hours ago, they have yet to match the 19 percent of the network they controlled earlier this week.

On the other hand, just two mining pools supporting Bitcoin SV – CoinGeek and SVPool – control more than 51 percent of the network hash power, meaning the two pools are potentially able to mine empty blocks on the Bitcoin ABC network as threatened by SV supporter Craig Wright.

It remains unclear whether all of the mining pools and nodes currently running bitcoin cash software will upgrade to the versions published by either Bitcoin SV or Bitcoin ABC, and whether the network will indeed split.

The hard fork is scheduled for roughly 16:40 UTC later today.

Price action

While Bitcoin SV’s price briefly matched and even overtook Bitcoin ABC just a day before the anticipated fork, the two tokens’ prices diverged sharply in pre-fork trading on crypto exchange Poloniex in the hours leading up to the fork.

As of 14:40 UTC, two hours before the anticipated fork, BCHABC’s price rose to $289.58, up nearly 11 percent over a 24-hour period. In contrast, BCHSV’s price dropped 45.54 percent to $122 over that same period of time.

Those prices remain volatile – as of 15:30 UTC, BCHABC fell nearly $40 before rising $25, and is trading at $282 at press time.

BCHSV continues to fall, dropping to $90 at press time – down nearly 60 percent over 24 hours.

Both tokens continue to trade at lower levels than bitcoin cash itself. While the year-old cryptocurrency’s price fell concurrently with the overall market sell-off, the token’s price remains at $385.58 as of press time.

Crypto exchanges began suspending bitcoin cash transactions in anticipation of the hard fork, including Coinbase.